*how cute* Especially after the coldest wettest spring in 18 years according to the article.

Sometimes wacky weather is just that. Why the hell does everyone think that any deviation from the average is evidence of ZOMGECOPALYPSE!!!

Yup it's just that simple. On one side are people who realize that weather is just weather, and on the other are people literally running in circles and hyperventilating for no reason whatsoever other than that it's unusually warm in Alaska right now.

Myria:Alaska, Canada, and Russia are going to make out like bandits from global warming. A lot of land quickly becomes useful. That, or has to deal with extreme temperature shifts each year.

There's only one problem with the theory about land becoming more useful: most of the land does not. It's either rock, muskeg or acidic sponge sitting on top of permafrost. In exchange for such dubious much we'd lose the Australian, American, Chinese and Indian breadbaskets/ricebowls.

Ed Grubermann:soosh: Ed Grubermann: It's been seriously hot for the last three weeks here in Juneau. We got a break due to a thunderstorm last night. But thunderstorms are really rare here. Last year we didn't really have a summer, just a short respite from winter.

I still can't believe I slept through the first thunderstorm in the last eight years or so.

Speef:The tragedy here is that this "debate" misses the exceptionally important fact that we could possibly be killing everyone on the planet. You'd think people could take a minute to learn what the difference between observed data and opinions are, and to put aside partisanship if the stakes were everyone's survival. But, apparently not.

Lies -- we wont kill off everyone on the planet -- the cities and coastal areas are likely screwed and food prices will go up and up but i hardly think the human race is doomed...

Our way of living maybe but i'm not so convinced that its all that great... The luxuries are nice but they aren't whats important... Survival is about being flexible. Surely empires have fallen in the past due to pestilence and drought -- this will be no different. We will get by.

Yamaneko2:Myria: Alaska, Canada, and Russia are going to make out like bandits from global warming. A lot of land quickly becomes useful. That, or has to deal with extreme temperature shifts each year.

There's only one problem with the theory about land becoming more useful: most of the land does not. It's either rock, muskeg or acidic sponge sitting on top of permafrost. In exchange for such dubious much we'd lose the Australian, American, Chinese and Indian breadbaskets/ricebowls.

Our experience here in western Canada over the last 30 years is that spring is colder and coming later, and fall is warmer and drier. Which would be ok, except the days of maximum sunshine no longer coordinate with the days of maximal warmth. That means that our growing seasons aren't actually getting any longer, and may in fact be getting shorter.

Personally, I'm happy it's trending towards wetter- We're already losing a substantive amount of glaciation and thus runoff, so if it gets even drier then we're in for a world of hurt.

Too_many_Brians:As an ex-alaskan, I remember back in the 80's when it was over 115 deg in Fairbanks. And then -40 that winter. central Alaska really sucks.

/all of alaska really sucks.

As an ex-Alaskan, your memory sucks. The highest ever temperature recorded anywhere in Alaska coontil this week) was 100 deg. The highest recorded temp in Fairbanks was 99 (in 1937). Between 1981 and 2010, the hottest day in Fairbanks was 94 degrees, 21 degrees cooler than your claim.

Unless you happen to have better temperature measurements than NOAA . . .

MrSteve007:Too_many_Brians: As an ex-alaskan, I remember back in the 80's when it was over 115 deg in Fairbanks. And then -40 that winter. central Alaska really sucks.

/all of alaska really sucks.

As an ex-Alaskan, your memory sucks. The highest ever temperature recorded anywhere in Alaska coontil this week) was 100 deg. The highest recorded temp in Fairbanks was 99 (in 1937). Between 1981 and 2010, the hottest day in Fairbanks was 94 degrees, 21 degrees cooler than your claim.

Unless you happen to have better temperature measurements than NOAA . . .

I'd put those numbers at 95% and 5%. For the vast majority of people, "fact" is "whatever they happen to think at the moment", even if that changes moment to moment. They also tend to view these momentary opinions as immutable universal truths. The odd part is that (in my observations, anyway), the people with this "magical" type of logic are the ones who DO see matters in black and white... either statement A is a dirty, rotten lie, or it is pure, sweet truth. The category that statement A belongs to might change several times in an afternoon, for little to no reason, but it will always be True or False at any given time.

The vast majority of the people I know engage in this type of thinking. If you talk to them about it, either they don't understand what the problem with their "logic" is, or they are angered that they have found someone who disagrees with them as to the validity of statement A (even if you refuse to tell them your position, or tell them that your position is that statement A contains correct, incorrect, and disputed elements).

Honestly, since the vast majority works this way, and word definitions are driven by common usage, "fact" means "whatever you heard on TV most recently". It's only a matter of time until the dictionary publishers update their books.

MrSteve007:Too_many_Brians: As an ex-alaskan, I remember back in the 80's when it was over 115 deg in Fairbanks. And then -40 that winter. central Alaska really sucks.

/all of alaska really sucks.

As an ex-Alaskan, your memory sucks. The highest ever temperature recorded anywhere in Alaska coontil this week) was 100 deg. The highest recorded temp in Fairbanks was 99 (in 1937). Between 1981 and 2010, the hottest day in Fairbanks was 94 degrees, 21 degrees cooler than your claim.

Unless you happen to have better temperature measurements than NOAA . . .

http://www.nws. noaa.gov/climate/xmacis.php?wfo=pafg

Well, that does suck. I remember being at the mini-golf lot just outside of Fairbanks at some amusement place, it had old cars and "frontier" stuff. When I was a kid we used to drive up from Anchorage every couple of years to camp in Chena (sp?) Hot springs and sometimes visit this place. Anyway, the thermometer that was hanging in a shaded section of the manager's hut read 115 and they had a sign that said they close it down at this temp- then they closed it down. I guess I never really connected the sun hitting it. Derp.